Re: Psychological Trauma - Sandow

From: Greg Sandow <greg@gregsandow.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2001 10:53:01 -0500
Fwd Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 04:12:41 -0500
Subject: Re: Psychological Trauma - Sandow
>Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 13:46:30 -0500
>To: ufoupdates@home.com
>From: John Velez <johnvelez.aic@verizon.net>
>Subject: Re: Psychological Trauma
>>>Show me the poll or the interviews with a substantial group of
>>>either Budd, David, or John Mack's clients that substantiates
>>>these outrageous claims that they 'uniformly' all share the
>>>_same_ point of view as the individual researchers in question?
>Hi Kevin, hi All,
>Kevin opines:
>>Actually, this is something of a red herring. I quoted from both
>>Mack and Jacobs, making the same point that Jim had made. It was
>>Mack who suggested that Hopkins, Jacobs, and Nyman pull from
>>their experiencers what they want to see. Mack said it to us
>>during a video taped interview and he said it to Bryant in his
>>book... as I mentioned before.
I'd love to see a poll of abductees, as John outlines.
My unscientific opinion -- based just on hanging out with Budd's
people over the years -- is that they don't at all necessarily
share Budd's view. I've known several with pronounced
aliens-are-friendly/new age leanings.
As someone mentioned here, Eddie Bullard did indeed do a study
of investigator influence. He found that investigators didn't
influence the specifics of what abductees reported, which surely
is more important than whether abductees share the
investigators' views of the phenomenon. I don't know where this
can be found; very likely in a back issue of IUR. It's a great
shame that there's no published collection of Eddie's papers.
This critique of abduction researchers -- that they influence
the views of the abductees they work with -- is messed up, on
several counts.
First, as John points out, it's never been substantiated with
real data. It's purely an assumption, based (I'm guessing) on
remarks by a few abductees who've appeared in public.
Second, as Eddie Bullard showed, investigators don't appear to
have much influenced over the basic details of the experience,
as reported by abductees. If critics are going to quote
researchers about each other's influence -- Dave saying John
Mack sways his people, John saying that about Budd -- critics
also ought to quote the same researchers about the things their
abductees share. Both Budd and John have stressed that their
abductees report the same experiences (painful medical
procedures from John's people, spiritual epiphanies, or the
like, from Budd's). The investigators and abductees may simply
interpret them differently.
Third, if investigators do have some influence, even a strong
one, on how abductees think about abductions, why on earth would
that be strange or discreditable? Violin teachers very famously
have a very similar influence. So do singing teachers. If you're
an advanced professional student, you normally find yourself
studying with a very famous teacher, with pronounced views on
violin or vocal technique. You end up sharing those views. Or
else, if those views don't work for you, you leave -- which is
exactly what happens with some abducteees, who don't like the
views of the investigator they work with. An investigator could
easily influence the opinions of abductees, without manipulating
the details of their reports.
Greg Sandow